


Room for Interpretation

by afrakaday



Series: Liaising With the Frenemy [2]
Category: The Closer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-24
Updated: 2012-07-24
Packaged: 2017-11-10 14:45:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/467471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrakaday/pseuds/afrakaday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sharon said it couldn’t happen again. That phrase has room for interpretation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Room for Interpretation

Sharon looked over at her dark-haired companion and recalled a recent conversation.

_”This can’t happen again.”_

_“I’m kind of amazed that it happened at all. But yeah, I agree.”_

She and Fritz had established that much during their initial meeting.

So why were they naked in her bed?

* * *

_Earlier that evening_

Sharon’s cell vibrated where it lay on her desk, the display showing an incoming call from a number she didn’t recognize. She glanced at her closed office door and picked it up. “Hello?”

“Sharon? It’s Fritz.”

“Agent Howard,” she said, her tone standoffish. “What can I do for you?”

He hesitated. “I need your help.”

“With what?” She sounded vaguely curious, though he might be mistaking professional courtesy for genuine interest.

“The Baylor case, getting our own attorney. Can we meet for coffee or something?”

Sharon checked her watch. It was 6:30 pm, past time to head out on a Friday evening. “All right. The Urth Caffe off Alameda, twenty minutes?”

“Thanks, Sharon. See you then.”

* * *

“So not only did she cancel the cable, and the landline, and the paper, without even telling me,” Fritz was saying, his volume escalating with each alleged transgression. “But she also intends to subject me to her cooking. I’ll never be able to handle that much clam linguine,” he complained, concluding his litany of frustrations with his sudden skinflint of a wife.

Sharon stirred her latte thoughtfully. “Doesn’t she realize the triviality of such savings in the face of such a large expense?”

“I guess she just wanted to feel like she was doing something about the situation. But this whole thing has her seeing red, she’s not able to be rational about anything involving the case, or lawyers.”

“So how can I help?” she asked. “Please don’t tell me that just because we slept together one time, you’ve decided I’m a natural confessor for your marital problems.”

Fritz reached out and placed his hand over hers, halting the anxious stirring that had completely erased the barista’s artistic heart design in the foam. “That is _not_ why I called,” he said. “I have an idea, but I wanted to run it by someone who knows more about the procedures within the LAPD for defending cases in which an officer is sued in both their individual and professional capacity.”

“What’s your idea?” she asked warily, withdrawing her hand and placing it in her lap.

“My parents left me a small inheritance,” he began. “I thought we would use it on a down payment on a house. But it’s been three years, the market is at historic lows, interest rates are practically nothing, and I still can’t get Brenda Leigh to get interested in looking at properties with me.”

"I’m a police officer, not a real estate agent. Get to the point,” she ordered, shaking her head and gesturing circularly at him.

“I want to pay Gavin’s retainer myself. But I know Brenda won’t let me as a matter of principle. I told her she ought to talk to Pope about trying to find some money from the City or the Department for her defense,” he said, wincing at the memory of his angry exit from their house an hour earlier.

Sharon snorted. "Good luck with that. The city is penniless. They’ll settle the case on their own behalf and leave Brenda on her own.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said. “So what I’m thinking is, I pay the retainer, but let Brenda think the money is coming from the city.”

She bit off the end of her hazelnut biscotti and chewed slowly as she processed what he’d just said. “I don’t think Gavin will go for that, Fritz. It's a conflict of interest to lie to his client about how the bill is getting paid.” She sipped her latte and added, “Pope would be all for it, though. He doesn’t have to find the money and Brenda thinks he’s her knight in shining armor? That sounds like his fantasy to me.”

Fritz scowled briefly before reaching out and brushing off the lapel of her jacket. “Crumb,” he explained as she blushed.

“Who’s the white knight now,” she teased in thanks.

“So if I can get Gavin on board, you think it would work?” he asked.

“That’s a big _if_ ,” she said, tossing her hair back over her shoulder. “What about the fact that you’d be lying to her?” She paused, then continued in that emphatic way she had. “Because she will find out eventually, Fritz.”

Fritz’s face contorted into an expression very different from the one with which he normally regarded his wife. “She doesn’t talk to me about things,” he said with a sneer. “This is no different.”

“Oh please,” Sharon said. “You can’t equate a canceled subscription to the _LA Times_ with a twenty-five thousand dollar retainer. That’s the kind of bean-counting that gets a person divorced. Or, in other contexts, indicted.”

“It’s my money,” he said stubbornly. “I should be able to spend it how I want.”

She shook her head at him. “You, Agent Howard, are nothing if not determined. I don’t agree with deliberately misleading Brenda about where the money is coming from for her defense.”

Pursing her lips, she exhaled slowly and shifted in her chair. She must have crossed her legs, because suddenly her calf was resting against his knee under the small square table. Neither one of them expressed any discomfort at the contact, nor did either of them move away; it just was.

He realized with a start that she was still talking; apparently retracting her previous point, it would seem. “But I can recognize a certain expediency in it, as well,” she was saying. “If you can get Gavin to agree to this farce, I will make sure Pope is clear on things.” Her mouth took a firmer line before she added, “We all want this case to go away. For _all_ of the defendants.”

“Thank you, Sharon.” He held her gaze and watched the corners of her eyes crinkle knowingly as thoughts unbidden returned to him of how she’d felt wrapped around him, shuddering beneath his touch as he took her against her desk. He couldn’t deny that it had been a good first time. So good that it seemed a shame for it to end up being the only time. He shifted his leg slightly under hers, trying to calm his racing pulse.

Sharon broke the contact as she pushed her chair back tentatively and grabbed her purse off the hook on the side of the table. “Talk to Gavin tomorrow or Monday and let me know how it goes, he won’t be able to tell me anything directly due to privilege. If that’s everything...”

It wasn’t, he quickly decided, against his better judgment. “Actually, there is one more favor I would like to ask of you. You can say no...”

She smiled despite herself. “ _What_ ,” she said, amused. “You must be determined to owe me.”

“Do you have cable at your house?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, having an idea of where he was going with that question in light of his earlier complaints. “Yes.”

He hung his head sheepishly, an awkward, overgrown boy about to ask his crush to join him at the Sunday matinee. “You think I could come over to watch the Dodgers game?”

He matured several years in an instant, feeling more like a college student who had just confirmed that there would be a third date, when she gave a resigned but very definite nod.

* * *

“TV’s in here,” Sharon said, leading Fritz through her front door and into a comfortably appointed living area. She set her purse and keys down on a small table and looked for the remote. “I don’t watch it enough to know what channel you need...”

She stopped talking as Fritz leaned over her and tugged aside the collar of her suit jacket, nibbling at the skin he’d exposed at the base of her neck. “Mmmm.”

“You have a television in your bedroom?” he said in a low voice, pressing his hips against her backside.

Distracted by the journey his lips were taking from her ear along her jaw, she gave a slight nod. “Mmm-hmm.”

“Can we watch in there?”

Slowly she nodded, then shook her head and came back to herself, whirling around to face him. “What? No. Decide what you want to do, but I will not have the _game on_ while we’re messing around,” she hissed.

And he was back to clueless adolescent hanging out in his girlfriend’s parents’ basement. The mature and experienced man in him reminded him to press his advantage.

"So you’re amenable to messing around, then?” he asked with a smirk.

A conflicted look crossed her eyes as she took a moment to consider his question. She didn’t say anything, just rose up on her toes to place a chaste kiss to his lips before taking a step back.

“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked, hanging her hands from her jacket pockets as she looked around for a diversion. She was normally so unflappable that he found her nervous mannerisms appealing, knowing that something about him was causing her to react that way.

Fritz shook his head. “No thanks.” He stepped into the living room and admired the view through the glass doors to the patio and the sprawling city below. “Nice.”

“My bedroom window faces downtown,” she offered from behind him.

He turned and gave a minute tilt of his head. “Let’s see it.”

When they stepped through the door to her bedroom, she barely had time to flip the light switch and step out of her heels before he was on her, pushing her onto the bed. She caught on to his pace and started unbuttoning her blouse and shrugging out of her suit while his lips roamed her mouth, his tongue and hers touching and teasing in a prelude to things to come.

They didn’t say anything, just stripped off their clothing in between fervent kisses so that they were both down to their underwear fairly quickly. He tugged her panties off intently and leaned down to run a trail of kisses along the inside of her leg from ankle to thigh. She relaxed against a pile of pillows and looked down at him, relieved that she'd happened to shave her legs in order to wear a skirt suit today.

“I didn’t get to do this before,” he said, nuzzling her her inner thigh before pressing his lips to her lower ones. He ran his nose along her cleft and placed a promising kiss at her center before licking up to her clit, swirling his tongue around the sensitive nub while his fingers spread her arousal around.

She gave a throaty moan, followed by a gasp as he slipped a finger inside her. “So good, Fritz.” She let him settle into a rhythm before moving her hips against him to increase the stimulation. He added another finger, stretching her, as he continued to tease and suckle her clit.

Suddenly he withdrew, causing her to whimper. "Turn over," he said, his eyes dark and unfocused. He reached for her hip and gave a little tug, squeezing her ass once she flipped onto her stomach and pushed her hips up and back toward his face.

"That's it," he said huskily, leaning forward and resuming his oral ministrations.

Sharon bit her lip and buried her face into the pillows, willing herself not to cry out at the onslaught of pleasure created by the direct stimulation to her clit this position allowed. She arched her back--dog pose, her mind recognized hazily--and found herself clenching and crashing and collapsing into a satiated heap far sooner than she would have thought possible without her own practiced touch.

She turned her head to the side so she could breathe again and straightened out her legs to let her body recover. "Fuck, Fritz," she said. “They give secret classes on that at Quantico?”

He stretched out next to her and ran his hand along her spine in soothing back-and-forth strokes. "Good?" he asked, unnecessarily.

She turned her head to face him, though her eyes remained closed. "Mmm-hmm." Slipping her hand out from beneath the pillows, she blindly reached down and groped until she found the fabric of his boxers. She stroked his length through the material a few times before dipping her hand beneath his waistband, causing him to gasp when her warm fingers finally encircled him.

"Need to do something about this," she murmured, peeking at him through one cracked eyelid. "You're so patient."

He thrust a little into her grip as she continued to pump him in long, lazy strokes. Though he found the sight of her incredibly erotic, he found his patience had limits.

"On your back?" he asked, unable to keep the pleading tone out of his voice.

"Mmm. Okay." With great effort, she opened both eyes and relinquished some of her orgasmic lassitude. He moved away from her body, inviting her to roll toward him so she was in the center of the bed, looking up at him as he shifted himself over her.

"Hey," she breathed inarticulately. The first brush of his cock against her folds sent a jolt through her body, whether due to surprise that he'd shed his boxers or because she was still oversensitized, he couldn't say.

"Hey yourself," he said, reaching down between them to adjust his position. He pushed his length along her pussy, coating it in slick moisture that he found there. She was beginning to writhe her hips against him, seeking more contact; he took that as his cue that she was ready, and sheathed himself inside in one slow but insistent stroke.

“Oh,” she said, smiling. “That’s good.”

“Yeah?” he asked, bracing his arms on either side of her head and driving deeper.

“Really good,” she confirmed, grabbing his ass in an effort to slow his pace. “Better than the desk. Fuller--”

He covered her upturned mouth with his, initiating an exchange of full lips and trailing tongues, rocking gently against one another into the cradle of her soft mattress. She bent her knees and braced her feet for leverage, allowing her to grind against him with each slow, deep thrust. Once again she found herself on the brink of climax in far less time than she could have anticipated.

Sharon slid her hands up from his ass, along his back, and looped them over his neck, pulling her his head closer to hers so she could croon against against his ear. “It’s okay to let go,” she said, taking a deep breath and consciously relaxing her body, which had been coiling more tightly with every progression of foreplay, each subsequent thrust. “I’m so close--you’re so good--”

Fritz flexed his hips in quick succession, wanting to see her shatter beneath him. He reached down and toyed with a rosy nipple, giving it a firm pinch and doing the same to the other side when she moaned in pleasure. “That’s it, Sharon. Come on, baby.”

For a brief second he saw a flash of the condescending look she normally reserved for disrespectful subordinate officers, and mentally filed away a lesson from her reaction: _don’t call her baby._ “Yeah, come on.” He barely recognized the sound of his own breathless pants as he wavered somewhere between ecstasy and oblivion.

She cried out nonsensical utterances as a second orgasm seized her body. He vaguely wondered if he’d ever be able to hear her yell at anyone without getting a hard-on again. When she clenched her inner muscles around him he let himself fall, swept away on a strong lusty wind into her open arms.

* * *

_Later that evening_

Fritz turned his attention from the television to the woman reading beside him, deciding she was beautiful with mussed hair and wearing nothing but a sheet and her glasses. Her pensive look intrigued him, prompting him to mute the sound on the game and ask the question he’d been thinking about since he first came into her house.

“So what made you change your mind?”

Sharon set aside her book and turned on her side to face him, the sheet falling away from her body as she did so. He loved how unself-conscious she was. But her tone was at odds with her relaxed demeanor as she began to speak.

“In my work for Professional Standards, one of my responsibilities is to examine the policy implications of phrasing and language.”

This was definitely Captain Raydor, not the uninhibited temptress he was had decided at some point this evening that he intended to get to know better. He raised an eyebrow and nodded slightly for her to continue. Her tongue peeked through her teeth in concentration as she contemplated her next words.

“‘This can’t happen again’ should be understood in the context in which the statement was made. I would construe it as meaning that office trysts such as our first encounter are off the table.” She scooted closer to him, tucking herself into his side and slipping a leg between his. “This, however, is not the office.”

Fritz looked around her bedroom. “Nope.”

She trailed her fingertips across his broad chest. “Thus, our current posture is not inconsistent with our prior agreement.”

The way she said it convinced him it was the most reasonable thing in the world.

He grinned and ran his hand through her tangled locks, wanting to indulge in the unexpected evening’s last stolen moments. “I like the way your mind works, Captain.”  
  



End file.
